


Writ in Blood

by Kasimir (Ammar)



Category: Dragon Age: Origins
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-04-24
Updated: 2015-04-24
Packaged: 2018-03-25 12:49:26
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 797
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3811090
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Ammar/pseuds/Kasimir
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Based on a rather interesting comment made by Gaxkang and The Darkspawn Chronicles. Or: A World Without The Warden, For The Most Part.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Writ in Blood

**Author's Note:**

> The View From Nowhere. Also, there's an A.E. Housman reference here, a T.S. Eliot reference, and an Assassin's Creed reference.

_Eyes are on you from a **very** high vantage, Warden. I cannot hide in your wake, but I will not be a footnote! Witness Gaxkang! _

_-_ Gaxkang the Unbound

-

From Ostagar to Highever, Ferelden burns.

The first warning is at Highever, when a keep burns, taken through a knife in the back, and then in the gut. A sharp smile, and an arl strides off, confident in his new title and the promise made.

No one is there to hear. The teyrn Cousland has only one son, and he has been sent off to Ostagar.

Ostagar is second, when the Grey Wardens and the King fall through a teyrn’s treachery. Chance preserves a single Grey Warden, and a prince. They are the same man, and an old Witch sits in her hut, spinning the threads as she pleases, holding them up to the sunlight. They are all part of the same little game, and she will play for so long as it amuses her. Ishal burns. The beacon at the tower burns, until the darkspawn take it and then it goes dark again.

The Circle of Magi is third; almost at the same time as Orzammar. A brother is slain, and the darkspawn are to blame. Prince Bhelen Aeducan is the heir apparent now; there is no child to stand between him and his ambition. The Circle is broken and a blood mage escapes, desperate. He is left for dead, until a teyrn’s man will find him and take him to Redcliffe to poison an arl.

All the pretty pieces, see how they fall. Cast the bones and mark it, _mark it!_

Wolves devour the slain and grow thick with the taint. Spirits move and then the forest runs red with Dalish blood. Dalish bleed as red as the humans they despise and the blood runs throughout the forest channels and the trees drink and grow thick with hatred.

A Witch watches and waits and marks the way the pieces dance, the way the game unfolds. Urthemiel moves, but does not move but there are greater hands setting the clockwork of history in motion and _see!_ There and _there_ are the hands and the rest is all inexorable and must happen and the City that is Empty that is Bereft stands at the heart of it all, the doom on the land, the doom on the world!

A village is razed and the inhabitants cry out but there is no one left to hear them as the First Wrong devours the land and devours and devours, for it _hungers_. A Circle breaks; a Veil is rent, and demons and abominations stalk old stone, and the walls are bleeding, slowly bleeding and screaming for those with ears to hear but events are in motion and Ferelden is burning, an Alienage burns, until Denerim is ablaze and the Blight is upon them, upon the Warden-Prince-King and his men.

From there events proceed swiftly; as if to say it has not been written since the great machine of history has been set in motion. The darkspawn take Denerim; the Great Dragon kills a King and the last Grey Warden, dashes him against the stones of his city and the Witch’s daughter, the Sister, the Crow, the Sten, the dwarf, the Healer; they do not meet in this life, except in death.

And from Ostagar to Denerim, Ferelden burns and the land runs thick with Blight, scarlet-black with Taint and blood.

But there are hands, and there are players in the game and one says _STOP_ and the game begins anew. In a sense it hasn’t ever begun, yet all of this must have happened just as if all things have been played out to final consumnation. It is _necessary_. It is _written_.

Teyrn Bryce Cousland has a second son. King Endrin Aeducan has three children. There is an elf, insignificant, in the grand course of things, named Cyrion Tabris and on one afternoon, for no particular reason he goes down a particular road with a merchant cart and meets an woman named Adria and they have a son. A Dalish Keeper meets a woman from another clan, Kalah Brosca has two daughters to yell abuse at, and one after another, two young mage-children are taken from their families and to the Circle in the same boat, glancing at the tower with the curious eyes of the young. One is crying but they do not speak to each other and if they do, it is inconsequential; they will not remember each other’s name and they must not meet or the weight of the universe and the game and the strands will conceivably fly apart.

Two Wardens survive Ostagar.

The rest must follow from there.

The truth, history – it is written in _blood._


End file.
